Kaohsiung County Broadband Mobile Network

Since 2005 the Taiwanese government has invested over $1.2 billion into the M-Taiwan program to bolster Taiwan's broadband mobile communications industry and infrastructure. In addition to building a fiber backbone and providing R&D grants for developing new technologies and novel applications, it has also co-funded the constructions of four large-scale test networks. The Kaohsiung County broadband mobile network is the largest one, which consists of four major subsystems: (1) a mobile WiMAX wireless network that includes 90 base stations; (2) WiFi hot zones in three remote townships to provide on-line job training and Internet access to the indigenous residents; (3) a broadband IP network that provides VoIP and Internet data services to the county government and 27 township offices and their affiliated agencies and schools; and (4) a host of application services that include M-government, M-life and M-learning. This paper gives an overview of the system architecture, the employed technologies, the application services, test results and challenges.